A Conversation on Women in Science

Join the Arab American Cultural Center in an online round-table conversation about Arab/MENA Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine (STEM). Join the Conversation and Be Inspired.

Guest Speakers:

Besma Smida, Associate Professor, Dept Electrical and Computer Engineering (UIC)

Dima Qato, Associate Professor, Pharmacy (USC)

Leila Amiri, Assistant Dean, College of Medicine (UIC)

Eenas Omari, Assistant Professor, Radiology Oncology (MCW)

Conversation will be facilitated by Sara Hattab, UIC Student (major)

Event is co-sponsored by the Honors College and MENA Student Organization

Zoom auto-captioning will be available. For information, questions, and accessibility, please email us at: arabamcc@uic.edu or call us at 312-413-3253

Besma Smida is an Associate Professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After completing her appointment as a Post-Doctoral Researcher and later a Lecturer at Harvard University, she became an Assistant Professor of electrical and computer engineering with Purdue University Northwest. She received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Quebec (INRS), Montreal, QC, Canada. She was a Research Engineer with the Technology Evolution and Standards Group of Microcell, Inc., (now Rogers Wireless), Montreal. Prof. Smida has served as the Chair for IEEE Women in Engineering, Chicago Section, from 2011 to 2013, and has been the Chair of IEEE Communication Chapter, Chicago Section, since 2019. She currently serves as Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, Editor of the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, and a Guest Editor Sensors Open Access Journal. She is a Communication Society Distinguished Lecturer for 2021-2022. She was awarded the INSIGHT Into Diversity Magazine’s 2015 100 Inspiring Women in STEM, the Academic Gold Medal of the Governor General of Canada in 2007 and the NSF CAREER award in 2015. Her research focuses on In-band Full-Duplex systems and applications, backscatter modulation, IoT, and two-way communication networks.

Dima Qato serves as the Director for the Program on Medicines and Public Health at the University of Southern California’s School of Pharmacy. In addition, she also serves as the Hygeia Centennial Chair and Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Titus Family Department of Clinical Pharmacy. She has also been appointed as a Senior Fellow with the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. Prior to joining USC, Dr. Qato was an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacy Systems, Outcomes and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy (2012-2020). She also serves as a National Academy of Medicine Pharmacy Fellow for 2018-2020. Dr. Qato received her PharmD from UIC, an MPH from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and a PhD in Public Health from the University of Illinois School of Public Health. At the USC School of Pharmacy, she will develop and lead interdisciplinary research efforts focusing on drug utilization, access to medicines, and pharmaceutical policy both in the U.S. and globally to better understand why medications are used, or not used, and how they can and should be used in the population to promote equity, longevity, and good health.

Leila Amiri serves as Assistant Dean for Admissions and Recruitment at the College of Medicine at UIC. Previously she was the Director of the Medical College Admissions at UIC, and prior to that the Director of Admission and Financial Aid at the University of Chicago. She has served as the liaison for the committee on admissions for the Association of American Medical Colleges and as an AAMC holistic review facilitator working with other medical schools admissions committees on how to include holistic review in their process.

Eenas Omari is Assistant Professor and clinical therapeutic medical physicist at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She received her PhD in Electrical Engineering/Medical Physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her dissertation was focused on ultrasound elastography and attenuation imaging in cancer detection applications. Following the completion of her graduate studies, she was recruited to a postdoctoral fellowship in radiation oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin where she worked on research in the areas of ultrasound and MRI guided radiotherapy from 2014-2016. Dr. Omari completed her clinical training in therapeutic medical physics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2018. Following her clinical training, she joined Loyola University Chicago where she took on lead roles in commissioning the Viewray MRIdian MRI linac and clinical implementation of the MRIgRT program. She was the lead physicist implementing MRI guided real-time on-table adaptive radiotherapy (ROAR). In 2020, the Medical College of Wisconsin recruited her back to take a faculty position where she plays an important role in the online MRI guided adaptive radiotherapy program using the Elekta Unity system.  As a faculty member, Dr. Omari mentors therapy physics residents and holds various lectures in the area of imaging and therapy physics for medical residents. Dr. Omari has over 45 published peer-reviewed papers, conference proceedings, and abstracts. She is a member of the AAPM and ASTRO. She has been awarded several honors including becoming an associate of the Science Council mentorship program (SCAMP) from 2019 to 2021.